Guru Contests
This article was the Article of the Week for the week of 5/14/06. Guru Contests are bracket competitions held between the Contest experts (hence "Gurus") who reside in Board 8's Stats Topic. Ngamer and Ulti have run Guru competitions for every bracket since the '04 Game Contest. The latest Guru scoreboard as well as final results from all past seasons can be found at thengamer.com/guru. Past Guru Champions * Games 2004 - UltimaterializerX (185 pts) * Characters 2004 - nifboy (190 pts) * Villains 2005 - yoblazer33 (79 pts) * Characters 2005 - Jman (205 pts) * Top Ten Games List 2005 - voltch (14 pts, by tiebreaker over transience) * Top Ten Matches - Kaxon (20 pts) * Series 2006 - Z1mZum (79 pts) * Characters 2006 - Rufus Shinra (209 pts) * Characters 2007 - Explicit Content (525 pts) * Characters 2008 - FastFalcon (617 pts) * Games 2009 - KrahenProphet (653 pts) * Characters 2010 - Dr Football (429 pts) * Games 2010 - Black Turtle (327 pts) * Rivals 2011 - SuperNiceDog (191 pts) * Characters 2013 - raytan (202 pts) * Games 2015 - DpObliVion (280 pts) * Years 2017 - BKSheikah (83 pts) * Characters 2018 - Advokaiser (532 pts) Guru Nomination Choices Starting with the 2006 BSE Contest, a stipulation was added to Guru signups saying that everyone who enters the competition is required to save one nominate for the next season's bracket, to be spent on an entrant of the Guru winner's choice. Here is a listing of what entrants were backed by the Gurus, and how they fared. * Characters 2006 - Toadette, as chosen by Z1mZum ** After CJay limited the bracket to only 32 male characters, Z1m picked an obscure girl in the hopes of sneaking her into one of the 32 slots on the Female side of the bracket, but Toadette ended up just missing the cut. * Characters 2007 - Wario, as chosen by Rufus Shinra ** Massive support made Wario the 4th most-nommed Character on Board 8 and earned him a respectable #6 seed (out of 16) in the 128 character bracket. Wario survived past Captain Falcon and Banjo before getting his face handed to him by Fox and Sephiroth in Round Two. * Characters 2008 - Altair, as chosen by Explicit Content ** EC regretted this choice, as he made it before the release of Assassin's Creed, a game that ended up badly disappointing him. Nevertheless the rally was a huge success: Altair was the #1 most-nommed character on B8, earned a very impressive #2 seed in the bracket, and pulled off nice upsets over Lucario and Marth to earn a spot in Round Three. * Games 2009 - Super Mario World: Yoshi's Island, as chosen by FastFalcon ** Despite some initial grumbling (there was hesitation about putting another Mario title into what was expected to be only a 64 game bracket), everyone supported YI, making it one of B8's top picks for the season. SMW2 made it into the bracket as a #10 seed, but was embarrassed in R1 by Chrono Trigger before being dealt one of the bloodiest SFF beatdowns ever in R2 by Super Mario 64. * Characters 2010 - Prinny, as chosen by KrahenProphet ** Prinny received over 200 nominations, which was just enough to avoid the vote-ins which decided the bracket's final 28 spots. It successfully entered the Contest as a #13 seed and lost in Round 1 to #4 seed Ike with a very respectable 37.51%. * Games 2010 - WWF No Mercy, as chosen by Dr Football ** Football assumed that the next Contest would be a Character Battle, and ran a small tournament to determine which character would earn a free pass into the next Contest. Chocobo defeated Goomba in an epic final match to earn the official nomination spot. ...unfortunately for Chocobo, SB instead announced a third Games Contest, and Football picked WWF No Mercy as the Guru representative. It got a very impressive 6 seed, but was embarrassed by Fire Emblem: PoR, gaining less than 30% of the votes and finishing dead last in the X-Stats. * Rivals 2011 - Mega Man X vs Zero, as chosen by Black Turtle ** BT was initially unhappy about having to "waste" his Guru pick on what he thought was a dumb Contest idea, and was even more upset after hearing that SB was probably not going to allow Mario vs Sonic. But he ended up making a great choice: despite SB refusing to add them to the suggestion list, X/Zero was one of the most successful rallies in B8 history, earning the rivals a #1 seed in the final bracket. The duo made a nice run, defeating Sub-Zero/Scorpion and holding up well against Mario/Bowser to finish #8 on the final x-stats for the season. * Characters 2013 - Yuri Lowell, as chosen by SuperNiceDog ** SND was originally leaning toward legendary Pokemon Lugia immediately following the 2011 contest. But then, as the nomination period opened on 5/7/13, he changed his pick to Yuri. It was his favorite character and he believed that Yuri could avenge his poor 2010 performance (when he drew an extremely unfortunate opponent in Tifa). Yuri finished ahead of Face McShooty but was more than doubled up by Ryu... which wasn't awful, leaving him about middle of the pack in the final x-stats for the season. * Games 2015 - Sonic 3 & Knuckles, as chosen by raytan ** S3&K did extremely well in the nomination phase, easily earning a spot in the top 100 games (as confirmed by SB) despite over 42k noms being sent in site wide. However it missed the bracket because SB gave weight to outside factors like Metacritic scores and GameFAQs user ratings to determine every game's final seeding. The version of S3&K on the GameFAQs database is technically a PC port so it scored very poorly in those areas and couldn't crack the top 128 as a result, much to the dismay of B8 who considered it to have been kept out on a technicality. * Characters 2018 - Victor Sullivan, as chosen by DpObliVion and also Aqua, as chosen by BKSheikah ** Since there was no nomination phase for the Best Year In Gaming, Dp got to roll his 2015 victory over to Character Battle X alongside Years winner BKS. This didn't cause any complaints, because everyone was given 20 nominations slots. Aqua dominated nominations on Board 8 to earn a #2 seed in the bracket and a very winnable "girl power" four pack against Quiet, Ellie, and KOS-MOS. She ended up defeating Quiet easily and put up a respectable 43% against KOS-MOS in R2. Sully wasn't quite as supported but still finished #2 for most B8 noms and was granted a 6 seed and great opportunity against Aya Brea. Despite being the sitewide bracket favorite in the match he was easily defeated, managing only 40% of the vote. * Games 2020 - Super Meat Boy, as chosen by Advokaiser ** Advo decided to throw his weight behind 2010 indie darling SMB. It was a popular choice, and dominated the Board 8 nomination field. All-Time Guru Rankings Though over 235 Gurus have competed over the years, only 9''' True Gurus have been involved in every competition since Spring 2004. They have been bolded on this list. In order, the Top 25 on the All-Time Guru Rankings are... Last Updated in 2006 # '''UltimaterializerX - 822 points # King Morgoth - 820 # Sir Chris - 790 # FastFalcon - 787 # ChichiriMuyo - 781 # swirldude - 763 # Haste2 - 761 # charmander - 760 # Ngamer - 751 # Heroic Mario - 749 # red sox - 736 # Team Rocket Elite - 736 # cyko - 703 # Ringworm - 695 # yoblazer - 684 # Z1mZum - 676 # Yesmar - 672 # fett - 664 # DomaDragoon - 651 # MasterMage - 638 # HaRRicH - 626 # Aprosenf - 618 # Mac Arrowny - 616 # steve illumina - 614 # Sephirot - 611 External Links * Current Guru Scoreboard * All-Time Guru Rankings (Google Sheet) * Games 2004 Results (Excel File) ** Games 2004 Brackets * Characters 2004 Results (Excel File) ** Characters 2004 Brackets ** Characters 2004 Topic * Villains 2005 Results (Excel File) * Characters 2005 Results (Excel File) ** Characters 2005 Brackets ** Characters 2005 Topic * Top Ten 2005 Results (Excel File) ** Top Ten 2005 Topic (warning: hardcore) * Series 2006 Results ** Series 2006 Brackets * Characters 2006 Results ** Characters 2006 Brackets ** Characters 2006 Topic (Part One) ** Characters 2006 Topic (Part Two) * Characters 2007 Results ** Characters 2007 Brackets ** Characters 2007 Topic (Part One) ** Characters 2007 Topic (Part Two) * Characters 2008 Results ** Characters 2008 Signups ** Characters 2008 Brackets ** Characters 2008 Topic (Part One) ** Characters 2008 Topic (Part Two) ** Characters 2008 Topic (Part Three) * Games 2009 Results ** Games 2009 Signups ** Games 2009 Brackets * Characters 2010 Results ** Characters 2010 Brackets ** Characters 2010 Topic (Part One) ** Characters 2010 Topic (Part Two) ** Characters 2010 Topic (Part Three) * Games 2010 Results ** Games 2010 Brackets ** Games 2010 Topic (Part One) ** Games 2010 Topic (Part Two) ** Games 2010 Topic (Part Three) * Rivals 2011 Results ** Rivals 2011 Brackets ** Rivals 2011 Topic * Characters 2013 Results * Games 2015 Results * Years 2017 Results Category:Contests Category:GameFAQs Contests Category:Article of the Week winners